


Staring Problems and Jelly Donut Prey: A Love Story

by agoldenblackbird (mass_hipgnosis)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff, Gen, Humor, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Superhero Frathouse Skyscraper, Troll Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9780614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/agoldenblackbird
Summary: In which Bucky's courting behavior is not unlike a cat's, no one in the Tower is a shining example of healthy social interaction, and Clint's friends are trolls, but somehow it all works out anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt by princess_aleera on the Avengers Kink Meme.  
>  **Warnings** for stalker-ish behavior, including breaking-and-entering and creepy Edward Cullen style sleep-watching.

* * *

“Hey!” Clint yelps when Stark, three steps ahead of him into the conference room, snags the only raspberry jelly donut from the platter on the table. “You don't even _like_ raspberries.” 

“Yeah, but your seething hatred while you watch me eat it is delicious,” Stark replies with a smirk, lifting the pastry for a bite-then yelping when his wrist is snatched and twisted up behind his back. 

Clint watches, baffled, as Barnes relieves Tony of the donut, sets it on a paper plate, and puts the plate in front of the lone purple chair in the room (the rest of them are grey or blue). He looks at Clint, and then pointedly at the donut. Then he vanishes. Into thin air. As he does. “What the hell,” says Clint. 

“What the _hell,”_ says Tony. 

* * *

A week later, Clint wakes up in the middle of the night with the bone-deep feeling that someone is staring at him. It's hardly the first time he's been jerked out of sleep by his own neuroses, and it won't be the last. 

He curses under his breath and rolls over. 

Barnes is crouched on Clint's dresser, staring at him. “GAH!” says Clint, one hand going for the knife under his mattress, the other for the light switch at his bedside. 

He throws the knife as soon as he gets his hands on it, and it thunks into the drywall. Clint turns on every light in the apartment and checks all the closets, under the furniture, and in the air vents. 

It's even money whether Barnes was actually there and did that creepy vanishing thing that Tasha learned from him and refuses to teach anyone else, or Clint's just losing it. 

He suspects the latter, because why would he crouch on the dresser? How is that even comfortable? 

* * *

Clint comes home from a long mission in Madripoor to evidence of a sniper nest on his bed. The blankets are rumpled and flattened in one particular spot, and the ridiculous purple throw that Darcy knitted him for Christmas has been relocated from the couch. He also finds three long, Barnes-colored hairs on one of his pillows, and the throwing knife he keeps under his bed has been freshly sharpened and mysteriously acquired two identical friends. 

Clint starts to think the creepy dresser-crouching was not so made up in his head after all. 

If he were _actually_ as creeped out as he probably should be, he would mention it to Cap, but, well. No one who lives in the Tower is a shining example of healthy social interaction. Also, if Bucky has been sleeping on Clint's bed, at least he's been _sleeping._ It'll make a nice change from Steve looking at the dark circles under Barnes' eyes and the grey exhaustion of his face and then moping around like the world's saddest and most patriotic Golden Retriever. 

And it's not like Barnes slept on Clint's bed while Clint was _in it._

* * *

After he gets back from Madripoor, whenever Clint is in the same room as Barnes, all he gets is the other man's back. Eye contact first-making sure Clint is looking-and then a clear snub. 

Even though Clint doesn't speak Supersoldier Assassin with the fluency of either Steve or Tasha, he gets the message. _I want you to know I'm ignoring you._

He just doesn't know what he's done, or why it bothers him so much. 

It takes him a week-and Tasha laughing in his face twice-before he approaches Steve. “I'm in the doghouse and I don't know why.” 

Steve blinks at him. “You're coming to _me_ for advice on dames?” 

“I'm coming to you for advice on Barnes. Why the cold shoulder?” Clint restrains himself from making either a 'metal shoulder' or 'Cold War' joke. He's not Tony. 

Steve doesn't pretend not to know what he's talking about, and he doesn't laugh. Clint promptly decides Steve can replace Tasha as his best friend, because's Tasha's sense of humour is deeply Russian, and mostly consists of laughing at others' misfortune. 

“I usedta get the silent treatment when I'd gone and done somethin' dumb and got hurt,” he replies after a considering moment. “But 'silent treatment' is pretty much his default, these days. So I don't know what to tell you.” 

Clint came back from his mission with bruises in every color and flavor, two sprained fingers and a fractured cheekbone. So. Apparently Barnes doesn't like it when he gets injured. Which....is fair. Clint's not fond of it either. 

It would just be nice to know why. So he asks. “But why me? Why does he care?” 

Steve smiles his I-am-apple-pie-and-innocence smile. “Well, I don't know. S'pose you'll have to think it over. There must be _some_ reason.” And then there's a smirk. 

Scratch that, Steve's a _troll_ who spends too much time with Tasha and he's clearly picked up bad habits. Steve is cut. Clint will be best friends with JARVIS. 

And this whole thing with Barnes? Not what it looks like. There's just no way. For one thing, Steve would have given him a shovel talk already. 

Right? 

* * *

Clint is a little bit forgiven when the bruises fade. For a given value of 'forgiven' that includes Bucky nesting on his bed again; always during the day when Clint is out of the apartment. He's still getting the other sniper's pointed head-turns when they're on the common floor together. 

Clint's also spending a lot of time _looking_ at Bucky, noticing that he's being ignored. And he's been thinking about Natasha's laughter and how he was obscurely disappointed not to get any 'if you hurt my best friend' creative death threats from Steve. 

It's a sidebar advertisement when Clint's screwing around on Facebook that sparks the idea. 

Clint leaves the soft microfiber blanket on his bed along with the hand-knitted purple chenille throw that he's long since given up moving back to the couch. Judging by the faint smile Barnes is sporting all the next day, it's well-recieved. 

Next are the fur pillows-and he knows, he _knows,_ but really, supporting the fur industry is the least of his sins, and the faux stuff smells awful and the texture is all wrong. The fur is the exact warm brown as Barnes' hair. 

After a long three-day course in upstate New York trying and failing to teach basic scouting and tracking to a particularly hopeless class of SHIELD baby agents, Clint gets to back to his apartment to find the pillows neatly arranged at the foot of the bed with a lightweight collapsible carbon-fiber crossbow and quiver of bolts on top of them. The crossbow looks custom-made and the bolts have cyrillic writing stamped near the fletching. 

After a week spent feeling up what was probably _every sweater_ at _every department store in Manhattan,_ Clint leaves a hooded pullover in a shade of blue precisely between sapphire and navy, folded neatly on top of the pillows on top of the microfiber blanket, so that there's no room for misunderstanding. The label says 'cashmere' but Clint suspects it was made out of rainbows and fur gently and humanely collected from tiny kittens, and rinsed in unicorn tears. He takes the tags out first, both so Bucky can't give it back and also because what even is the point of a scratchy tag in a sweater that soft? 

Two mornings later at breakfast, Bucky takes the seat next to Clint at the breakfast bar and leans against his shoulder, nuzzling, and he's wearing his usual black BDU pants with a soft hooded sweater that brings out the blue of his eyes. 

Clint raises his coffee cup to hide his smile, and pretends not to see the metal fingers creeping onto his plate to snatch a piece of bacon. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Explanation](http://agoldenblackbird.tumblr.com/post/157249464023/happy-valentines-day-have-some-fic) for why I am posting finished stuff today instead of participating in EAD as I had planned.


End file.
